but that was in another country
by Spellthief
Summary: An AU retelling of the fairytale "Maid Maleen."
1. The Princess in the Tower

There are no doors in her tower.

The princess lives in an unbroken stone circle, twice as wide as she is tall. There are three floors of it, with ladders between them, and if she ties them end to end, she can brush her hands against the roof, and imagine that she is touching the sky.

The sky is what she misses most, except on those days where a quiet aching for the lake sneaks up in her heart. On quiet afternoons she can hear the calls of ducks over the wind. If she closes her eyes, she can still see those dreamlike days she spent with the prince on the lakeside, touching and laughing and loving. Those memories make her punishment bearable.

There is no one living in the tower save herself. Her father had promised her two handmaidens to attend to her during her imprisonment, but the princess refused their company. She sorely misses the sound of human voices, but she does not regret her decision. This punishment is hers and hers alone, and she would never subject any other to it.

The tower was built to break her spirit. It may break her yet, but for now, it is not an unbearable life. She is lonely, yes, but she lives comfortably. On the highest floor is a feather bed, as soft as the one she had in the castle, and an entire shelf full of her personal belongings. On the lowest there is nothing but barrels full of food and water. The food and drink stored there is meant to last the entire seven years of her sentence, but in just two years, the princess is not certain that it all will keep as long as it was intended. For now, all she can do is carefully ration herself until the seven years are up or, by some miracle, she is freed.

At first, she dared to hope that her prince would come to rescue her. Surely the valiant Prince Siegfried would not leave his one true love to be locked away for seven long years? But weeks trickled away into months, and it became clear that he was not coming for her. The princess could not say what kept him away, but away he stayed.

She does not want to doubt his love for her. It would be foolish, truthfully, to doubt the love of Prince Siegfried. Born white-haired and golden-eyed, it has long been rumored that there is a spell upon him. The nature of the spell varies with every telling: they say that he cannot tell a lie, that he is innocent of all sins, that he is doomed to be loved by all who lay their eyes upon him. But even if none of that were true, the princess knows that Siegfried is good-hearted and just. He would never profess his love to her if he did not truly love her.

But with every passing day, worry grows in her heart. Perhaps her prince had grown weary of her affections. Perhaps her prince had found another that he loved more. Perhaps her prince had realized that she, the graceless princess of an inconsequential kingdom, is not worthy of his love.

The doubt is so loud in her head that she does not notice the quietness that spreads over the land. Once, she could hear the creaking of carts and the laughter of playing children, even through the thick walls of her tower. But slowly a silence sinks over her kingdom, and she does not even realize it until all at once, the silence is broken.

At first, the sound is just a soft rushing, like the falling of water. It sounds almost peaceful.

She hears the clanking of armor and swords next. It is not a single soldier, but a vast army of them.

Then there is the screaming. Blood-curling shrieks, young and old, echoing over the hills. And then there is the pounding, human fists mere feet away from her head, beating against the stone of her tower.

A voice cries out, high and desperate: _Princess Tutu, Princess Tutu, you must get out._

* * *

Tutu is not her real name. Or rather, Tutu is not the name that was assigned to her on the occasion of her birth. Her Christian name is a long and frivolous thing—really three names all tied up together—and is only ever used by foreigners and scribes. As a small child, she rechristened herself "Tutu," a butchered abbreviation of her given name, and so she is known throughout the kingdom.

The last person to speak her name before now was her father. He stood on the outside of her tower, watching solemnly as she was bricked into her prison, and announced to her, "Now we will see what you are made of, Princess Tutu."

She is still rather sullen about that. Not just his words—those bother her as well, of course—but the whole situation of her imprisonment.

When Prince Siegfried asked for her hand in marriage, there should have been no reason for her father to refuse it. Her prince was heir to a kingdom far larger and wealthier than her own, and was host to one of the largest and strongest armies on the continent. Even if she had not loved him so dearly, the princess would have been pleased to be married to him. By every measure, it was a favorable match.

Yet, her father did indeed refuse the offer. Against all reason, he sent the prince away, and forbade her from going after. "That is not your fate," he told her. "You must marry another."

But the princess vowed that she would marry none but Prince Siegfried. Most fathers would have ignored her vow and forced her into marriage regardless, but her father did not. Instead, he vowed in turn that she would suffer seven years locked away in a tower, and when she emerged, he would have her marry the man he had chosen for her.

The princess thought that this was a foolish plan. Seven years might be enough to make her regret her vow, but five years hence she will no longer be a young woman. Whoever her father had intended her for will surely have wed another. Her father's plan could accomplish nothing but inflict pain upon her.

Perhaps that was all he desired. The princess is not inclined to bouts of anger, but when these sorts of thoughts weigh heavily in her mind, it edges her mood closer to it.

She has simmered alone in her tower for two long years. And in all that time, for all her pondering and pouting, she had never considered whether there might be some other reason for her father's decision. She had never thought what politics might be affecting her kingdom that she was not privy to, or if more had motivated her father than mere spite.

She had never even considered that her kingdom might be in danger while she was locked away.

* * *

Silence returns to her tower in a great rush. That, she thinks, is even more ominous than the screaming. The outside world has become an eerie quiet, a dreadful stillness that sits heavy in her stomach.

She does not mark whether it has been minutes or hours since the silence began, only that this is the length of time it takes her to rouse herself from her frozen shock. The princess steadies herself with a deep breath, then busies herself with the only conceivable thing she could do at this point: searching for an escape.

At first she walks a circle around her tower, her fingers tracing along the stone walls, digging along the grooves between the bricks. She finds none that is any looser than any other, and so she turns next to the meager supplies that she was given when she was first locked into the tower.

She has a small drawer full of kitchen utensils that were left to her, and from them she selects a long, thin bread knife, which seemed most suitable to her purposes. She picks a large brick on the northern side of the tower, and with a grimace, she begins to work the stone loose from the wall.

All night, she chips away at the mortar, until she can no longer hold her eyes open, and is forced to abandon her escape for slumber. Come morning again, she forgoes food and returns to her work. With agonizing slowness, she bores away at the walls up her prison until, finally, _finally_, the stone comes loose.

Her heart is skittering in her chest when the brick falls out of the wall, and she finally feels the cool breeze of outside air on her hand. The princess holds her breath and presses her face to the gap, and takes in her first sight of the outside world. It's evening outside, the sky dyed purple-blue and the trees rustling in the wind and wildflowers growing tall in the grass. It's beautiful.

The princess drinks in the sight for long moments, as though it might disappear if she looks away. Then she hardens her heart and returns to her task. She again raises her blunted knife and chips away at the next stone, and then another, stopping only to sleep. It takes her a week, but finally she opens a hole wide enough that she can climb through, tearing her skirts on the jagged edges as she forces her way out.

She does not delight in the softness of the grass beneath her feet, or the vastness of the sky over her head. The joy swelling in her heart is abruptly interrupted, replaced instead with the insistent gnawing of fear and anger deep in her stomach. She sees now what she could not from the confines of her tower: the city razed, the corpses of her people littering the ground, the stream running red with their blood.

For a moment, she wishes she could retreat back into the safety of her tower.


	2. The Knight at the Lake

The princess—who is, in truth, now a mere scullery maid—has but one thing standing between her and Prince Siegfried, and that is one extraordinarily rude knight.

"I told you," she says, "that I'm supposed to bring the tea to Prince Siegfried, so you have to let me in."

Almost plaintively, she holds up the small tray. It is carefully stacked with a little white teapot and teacups that have delicate yellow flowers painted along their rims. The knight looks down at her, profoundly unimpressed.

"You work in the scullery," he says. "They wouldn't send you up with here with a tray full of china."

"They did," she insists.

"The prince doesn't drink tea," he says.

"I'm not going to leave until you let me in," she snaps.

They stand glaring at each other in the middle of the hallway. She would just push past him, if she wasn't carrying the tray. But she is, and the knight is not moving at all. He takes a step closer to her, and gives her the fiercest glare she has ever seen.

"Leave, or you will regret this."

The scullery maid who used to be a princess has seen more than a few threats in her lifetime. So when the knight says this, she does not cower. But her hands do tremble slightly, making the teacups clink against each other, and she knows that she has been defeated. She sticks her tongue out at the knight in a most unprincesslike fashion, and then she turns away, taking slow, measured steps all the way back to the scullery.

The knight is right about one thing—they would never send her up to the prince's room, and certainly not while carrying a tray full of fragile things. The knowledge that the knight is doing his job well, however, is not a terrifically comforting thing.

* * *

This is not their first meeting.

The first time they meet is when Tutu stumbles into Siegfried's capital city, numb and tired and half-starved. There is nothing left of her kingdom, not a single hamlet or village, and all she can think to do is seek out help from her prince. Even if he no longer loves her, he is a just man. He would help her.

The streets of this city are flooded with refugees—some who survived from her homeland, and some who were from more distant kingdoms. Here she is just one gaunt face among many; none of them recognize her, or can spare a moment to hear her story.

This is when she meets the surly knight. When she approaches him, it is with a swell of hope in her heart. The people of the city might not recognize her, but she has oft visited the king's castle, and she believes that surely her face will be recognized by one of his knights.

But when he looks upon her, it is with polite disdain. Before she has even opened her mouth, he is dismissing her.

"I can't grant you an audience with the king," he tells her, with the wearied voice of someone who has said these same words many times already, "but there is work in the scullery, if you go to the castle gates and ask for Ebine."

The princess draws herself up as straight as she can. "I'm not looking for work," she begins to explain.

"Then you will starve," the knight interrupts, before she can speak again. He brushes past her without another word, leaving her open-mouthed and staring as he departs.

She does end up taking the work in the scullery—how else is she to approach her prince?—but she still thinks the knight is a jerk.

* * *

The knight was not always this unkind. He reflects on this fact as he stands at the edge of the lake south of the castle, glowering at nothing in particular.

It has been many years since he came to this country, and in some ways, he thinks he has recovered. The fear that used to live so sharp inside of him has faded to a dull ache; he still fears the Raven King, yes, but it is a tolerable thing.

Every year there comes news of another kingdom or province that he has destroyed, and a stream of refugees pours into the city. It used to devastate him, to hear these new tales of ruin, sending him into dark spirals of despair. But every year, it becomes just a little bit easier to hear. Every year, he thinks that he has come just a little bit closer to coping with his past.

He wonders what price he has had to pay, for this small measure of comfort.

Usually he is the only person at the lake. Prince Siegfried used to join him, in earlier times, but he has become something of a recluse since the disappearance of his princess love two years prior. Now Fakir has become quite used to standing here alone, baking in his armor beneath the hot summer sun.

On every third afternoon, however, he is joined by a most unwelcome presence. The lying, scheming scullery maid with fiery hair also comes out to the lakeside, walking along its shores, doing her very best to ignore him.

The first few days that he sees her at the lake, they do not speak. If she ever wanders to close to him as she walks, she holds her head high and does not so much as turn her gaze in his direction. He, likewise, fixes his own eyes on the waves over the water.

After two weeks of this, he finally speaks.

"Who are you?" he asks her, when she walks past. She stumbles when he speaks, and turns to face him, visibly startled.

"Oh, now you care," she says bitterly. He waits patiently for a few moments, then realizes that she does not intend to give him a proper answer.

"I always cared," the knight says. She glares at him, and he is startled by how guilty that makes him feel. "It's a dangerous time, right now. I can't let just anyone get near the prince."

"If I told you who I was," she says, "would you let me see him?"

The knight scoffs. The scullery maid makes an angry noise in her throat, a cross between a growl and a screech, and leaves without another word. He wonders if he should follow after her. He decides to stay where he is, and watches as she makes her way back to the castle.

Three days later, precisely on cue, they meet again. This time he asks, "Do you have a name?"

"Yes," she answers.

"Will you tell it to me?" he asks.

"No."

He grimaces. "Then what should I call you?"

She tilts her head ever so slightly, frowning just a little. "Pick something," she says.

He looks over at the lake, and the waterfowl floating atop it. He does not know many girl names. A few come to mind, but none of them suits her. He eventually decides that he has thought too hard on this. "Duck," he names her, after the first thing that he sees.

"That's not a name," she says. But she doesn't look that angry about it.

"Tell me your real name, Duck," the knight says, "and I will call you by that instead."

"If I told you my real name," she says, "would let me talk to the Prince?"

"Not a chance."

Her face falls. And again, he feels inexplicably guilty about it. There's no reason for it—thinly veiled threats from the Raven King and the prince's upcoming nuptials have made it a very dangerous time, and he will not allow a foreign scullery maid to get close enough to talk to him, no matter how much her lip wobbles. And it _is_ wobbling.

"Maybe after the wedding," the knight says, sighing heavily.

Her lip wobbles more, which is not exactly what he expected. "Wedding?" she asks, her voice soft and sad.

"You must be the only one in the kingdom that doesn't know. He's marrying Princess Kraehe because he's afraid the Raven King will attack us next."

The wobble vanishes, which is something of a relief to the knight. He is not entirely clear on how to deal with crying women. Now the scullery maid is deathly serious—angry even.

"The Raven King?"

"You really don't keep up with current events, do you?"

She glowers at him. The knight sighs. "Two years ago, the prince was engaged to be married to a princess from another kingdom. But the Raven King wanted his daughter to be married to the prince instead, and so he set out to destroy anything and anyone who could stand in his way."

"I see," the scullery maid says. Then: "I need to go."

She turns to leave. The knight is surprised by how much her sudden departure is bothering him. He wonders how she has gone so long without hearing about the Raven King, and why she insists on seeing the prince, and what has upset her. He wonders whether he can trust her.

"Will I see you again?" the knight asks. It wasn't the question he meant to ask, but somehow it slipped out regardless.

She glances at him over one shoulder. Duck opens her mouth as if she is about to answer him, but while she isn't looking at where she is stepping, she manages to trip over her own skirts and fall into the lake.

He hopes that means yes.


End file.
